Saturday, May 17, 2008
IsoHunt
Here's a update from http://www.isohunt.com regarding their court case with Hollywood
isoHunt tells court why Hollywood is wrong
Posted by IH on May. 4
I haven't written about our court case with the MPAA in a while. The numerous court filings we've submitted are often hard to read and comment on, but I believe this latest round of briefs filed in response to Judge Wilson's questions on clarification of the legal and technical issues of BitTorrent and isoHunt concerns you and how information is exchanged on the internet at large.
Central District Court of California wrote:
The Court currently has under consideration Plaintiffs' Motion for Summary Judgment on Liability. Before the Court issues its order, it would benefit from supplemental briefing regarding certain issues presented in the moving papers and at oral arguments. Specifically, the Court would benefit from a further description of the separate components involved in the bit-torrent downloading process used by Defendants' website. From the moving papers and the oral arguments, it is unclear which of the components involved are distributed or provided by Defendants. Supplemental briefing should also include a brief explanation of the interaction between these components and Defendant Fung's website, as well any connection with the copying of actual files and the services Defendants provide.
...
As followup to Wired's post about MPAA (Secretly) Tells Court Why BitTorrent Tracking Sites Violate Copyrights (MPAA's first supplemental brief in response to court), here's our briefs filed in response to MPAA's filings:
Our supplemental brief
My declaration on facts
I know these are long reads, but there are important issues raised in these briefs. The MPAA has taken a narrow point of view that copyright infringement is stealing, that isoHunt serves no other purpose than promoting and facilitating infringement of Hollywood films, that we the search engine together with www.Torrentbox.com and www.Podtropolis.com the trackers are akin to the bogeyman selling pirated DVDs on the street, that caching, linking, and indexing by and of automated and open systems is same as targeted and willful distribution. Our answer is a resounding no. isoHunt is a tool in the collective "BitTorrent ecosystem" akin to the Web, we do not want it to be used for copyright infringement against the wishes of copyright holders, we have a long-working Copyright Policy and relations with them (large and small, except the MPAA), and we have sought to promote at every opportunity uses of isoHunt and BitTorrent by various independent content producers of all sorts (video, music, software). You can find tons more examples of uses by independents in my declaration. To find us guilty is to find the Web at its infancy guilty because it was full of porn, and Yahoo guilty for making a directory of it. The freedom of search engines and linking are the fundamental principles of freedom of speech, to take it away is to end the internet and democracy as we know it.
For the legally inclined, our briefs linked above draws connection with the Grokster and Sony Betamax cases, both landmark cases in US copyright laws in relation with the latest technology of the time. Our case should it go to trial will set another precedent, for better or worse.
And on a sidenote of the MPAA's rhetoric that piracy is killing them, which is what this whole case is about: First they made peace with BitTorrent.com and sued other BitTorrent sites like us, leaving their message none too clear. (filter copyright infringing content on request and verification? Check) And considering isoHunt indexes BitTorrent.com, we have just created an infinite loop in their argument. Other good pieces include they proving themselves wrong with their own stats (stats to show the stock market), while having other stats like this and this to show Congress (both proven grossly "off" from reality). On the other hand though, I do think good film making should be rewarded, and the box office agreed. For one, I'm quite excited about Iron Man ( good reviews and great trailer ) and I want to see it soon. In theater that is, and you should too! Maybe I'll write a review after I've watched.
And I realize I just gave Hollywood a free ad. Maybe they should pay me.
Update May 8: Some interesting takes on this from Ars and TorrentFreak
Posted by trey at 2:24 PM
